***

My childhood memories weren’t happy ones.  As I watched my mother lie to me the next morning, I recalled similar situations from when I was younger.  I’d lost count of the number of times I begged her to stop seeing my father, and I’d lost count of the number of lies she’d told me when she agreed she would tell him to go.  I knew she didn’t lie to me intentionally.  She lied to herself as well.  There were a few times she did follow through and kick him out, but within a couple of months, he was always back.

Theirs was such a dysfunctional love.  I could never work out why they clung to each other like they did.  The moments where I glimpsed tenderness between them gave me hope, but it was always short-lived, until the day when I was a teen and I decided enough was enough.  I decided there had to be more to love than false hope and bullshit promises.  If the person you loved couldn’t be there for you always, they weren’t worthy of your time or your affection.

It had been over a year since Marcus stopped seeing my mother.  She’d grieved the loss of him, and I hoped she’d grown stronger through that experience; strong enough to say no to him the day he showed up again, back at her door.  He’d stayed away longer than I thought he would, but I was sure he was back now.  However, mum was denying it.

“Why aren’t you telling me the truth?” I demanded, a lifetime of anger flaring up.

“I am telling you the truth!  Yes, he came around, but no, I won’t take him back,” she pleaded with me to believe her.  She’d cried wolf one too many times, though.

“What promises did he make you this time?”

She didn’t answer me. She just began folding the laundry sitting on the kitchen table in front of her.  A dead fucking giveaway she was avoiding the truth.

I slammed my hand down on the table so hard it moved.  She jumped, and the fear I saw in her eyes hurt like hell.  I would never fucking hurt her but Marcus had, over and over, to the point where any little threat scared the fuck out of her.  “Fuck!” I roared, “I fucking hate what he has done to us.”  I rubbed the back of my neck and began pacing the small kitchen.

“Donovan, I know you think I’m weak and that I’ll go back to Marcus at the drop of a hat, but this time I won’t.  Yes, I’m weak.  I always have been.”  Her voice caught at that admission and my heart broke a little more for her.  She turned her distraught gaze to me and bared her heart.  “He promised me he would leave her; finally, after all these years.  And that he would stop being so violent.  I’m not taking him back, but it feels like I’m walking away from something I put my whole life into, and just when I can have what I’ve always wished for, I’m saying no.  Do you know how hard that is?”

She was so fucking close to freedom; if he screwed with that, I would fucking move the plan up and take the bastard out myself.  It was, after all, what I’d always planned to do.  And to watch my father suffer at my hands would fill me with the deepest fucking satisfaction I’d ever felt.

My voice was low and controlled when I spoke.  If I didn’t control it, I would explode at her.  “I want so much more for you, Mum.  I understand that back when you had me, you had no family to support you, so you thought sticking with Marcus was the right thing, but now you have me.  I can give you anything you need or want.”

“You can’t give me the one thing I need: the love of a man,” she whispered.

The roar between my ears was deafening, and I lost my fight to control myself.  “Marcus wouldn’t fucking know love if it smacked him in the face!” I yelled, wild at him, at her, and at the fucking injustice of a world full of hateful people.  “Can you not fucking see that?”  I hated swearing at my mother but I couldn’t help it today.  I needed to get out of here before I lost my shit completely.

She began crying, and I wanted to smash my fists into the wall.  All the anger and frustration inside me threatened to spill over, and I clenched and unclenched my fists over and over in an effort to stop myself.

“I know I should see that, but I can’t bring myself to move past the feelings I’ve had for him for so long.”  She was sobbing now.  My mother had been fucked up by her father, and those sins had set her on this fucked-up path she couldn’t find a way out from.

I pulled her to me and held her.  My hand smoothed her hair over and over as she clung to me.  When her sobbing had subsided, I murmured, “If you need me, any time of the day, you call me.  If he keeps harassing you and won’t leave if you ask him to, you call me.  I don’t care what I’m doing; I will come to you if you need me.  Yeah?”

The defeat I saw on her face killed me. It tore another fucking piece of my heart out.  There should have been hope. After all this fucking time, she should be seeing the light and feeling real hope, but all he’d left her with was sadness and despair.  “Yes,” she agreed softly.

“Thank Christ,” I said before hugging her again.

Relief flooded me, but the dark feelings of hatred and revenge stuck close like they always did.

Soon.

He’d be dealt with soon, and then, maybe she and I could finally find a way to move out of the darkness.

Chapter Three

Layla

I stood in the alleyway behind my bar and stared up at the inky sky.  Full moon tonight.  Fuck, I hoped the bar wasn’t about to be invaded by the crazies.  Diverting my gaze down the alleyway, I took in the two drunks passed out, completely oblivious to the thief raiding their pockets.